Latest / Send & Grow by SparkLoop / How to Increase Newsletter Conversions From 7% to 35% | Marketing Max | Send & Grow 2.0 Ep. 7

Transcript

How to Increase Newsletter Conversions From 7% to 35% | Marketing Max | Send & Grow 2.0 Ep. 7 · Send & Grow by SparkLoop

• Hunter Kallay (00:00) All right, hey there. Welcome back to Send and Grow. This is where we explore the personalities, stories, and strategies behind some of the most interesting newsletters and media businesses in the world. My name is Hunter Cali, and I'm the publisher partnerships lead at Sparkloop. I also run a daily AI newsletter with more than 50,000 readers. Today I'm joined by Max better known online as Marketing Max. Max has a pretty wild career path. Started on Wall Street, eventually found his way into paid media after a client basically asked him to take over their Facebook ads, which we'll get into, built an agency serving more than a hundred clients, sold it, and then went to build growth daily into a newsletter business reaching hundreds of thousands of subscribers. So pretty crazy journey there that I'm excited to get into. But apparently that that still wasn't enough marketing for one lifetime because he's now back in the agency world with Max's media buyers, where he's trying to rethink how agencies hire, charge clients, and actually drive growth. So Max, welcome to the show. @MarketingMax (01:02) Thank you for having me, Hunter. It's good to be here. Hunter Kallay (01:04) So you started on Wall Street. I read a little bit about your story. Then a client sounds like basically said, Every agency I hire sucks. Will you run my Facebook ads? you had almost almost no experience doing it, as as I understand. So like what made you crazy enough to say, Yeah, I'll do it? @MarketingMax (01:24) a bunch of things, but I hated working eighty hour weeks on Wall Street. I had just bombed the series seven exam, which is the exam you need to be licensed to sell securities on Wall Street. And so if there was any a a chance of me making real money on Wall Street, I needed to pass that exam and I am a terrible test taker. And I like she basically asked me like a week or two after. Bombing in the exam. I was I don't know what I'm gonna do. And she said, Every agency I hire sucks. I feel like you'd be really good at it. She said, word for word, you're good at convincing investors to give me millions of dollars. I feel like you'd be good at getting customers to give me $15 and $100 at a time. So Hunter Kallay (02:05) There you go. @MarketingMax (02:07) can I give you $2,000 and let's see what happens? And back then, $2,000 was worth a lot more on meta than it is today. The cost to advertise was literally, you know, 10% of what it is today. The the CPMs were. Two, three bucks back then. And today they're upwards of, you know, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty dollars. So the two grand went a lot further than it would today. And I was able to turn that two thousand dollars into twenty thousand dollars and collected revenue in the first two weeks. And I just immediately became hooked on Facebook ads. I went to Barnes Noble on Fifth Avenue. I don't know if it's still there post-pandemic, but I went to Barnes and Noble on Fifth Avenue and I went to the business section and bought every marketing book I could on SEO and CRO, landing page optimization. AdWords, Hunter Kallay (02:46) That's awesome. @MarketingMax (02:46) it was called back then, AdWords for Dummies. I bought I just spent like three hundred dollars on books. Just was like, I wanna learn this. This feels like a money machine. Facebook ads, this thing and Hunter Kallay (02:56) Yeah, turns out it kinda is. @MarketingMax (02:59) It absolutely is. It's the closest thing to a money machine I I've ever seen. For sure. Hunter Kallay (03:04) Awesome. So your first company you started was at 16 years old, I think, or or or something around there. You you have described it as Groupon for golf. so are you all have you always been a business type entrepreneur? Like has that always been kind of your mindset like around dollars and cents? yeah, tell me a little bit about @MarketingMax (03:26) Yeah. Hunter Kallay (03:27) that story. @MarketingMax (03:27) You're you're either you or your researcher or your AI researcher has done a good job digging that up. That's I I don't know where where they got that from. But yeah, I I I've always been entrepreneurial minded. My grandfather came to America with, you know, a couple dollars in his pocket and worked his way up in a stainless steel mill. with his brother and ended up buying the stainless steel mill from the owner when he retired. and he always taught me from the time I could open my eyes, whatever you do, you have to own the business. Whatever you do, you have to own the business. And he didn't make, you know, millions and millions of dollars, but he owned his destiny. He was in charge of how much money he makes every day. And he would play games with me as a kid. He he passed away when I was thirteen, but you know, we'd play games as a kid where like we would take on my Hot Wheels and we would pretend that it was like a car lot. And he was like, All right, now you have to sell me this car. You have to sell me this Hot Wheel. And I was like seven, you know, I was like eight. I was like, this is fun. And and so I've always kind of grew up Hunter Kallay (04:29) That's cool. @MarketingMax (04:29) entrepreneurial minded because of him. And I've named my holding company after him, in in his honor because, you know, he said, Whatever you have to do, you have to own the company. And he had a couple of really other fun, interesting lines. But yeah, he he was the one that got me into entrepreneurship. And yeah, when I was 16 years old, my golf coach at the time, I'm a big golfer, golf is golf is life. my golf coach at the time of our high school team saw a bunch of spin-offs of Groupon happening. Hunter Kallay (04:59) Yeah. @MarketingMax (05:00) And he had all the relationships with all the local golf courses because we needed to play and rotate our home Hunter Kallay (05:06) Yeah. @MarketingMax (05:06) course all the time. And they were struggling, like really struggling. And so we we decided to start group on for golf together. and I was kind of the marketing guide to get customers. So I like printed out flyers and I went to all the local golf courses and I put flyers on all the cars and I knew a couple of the local like head pros. And so I got them to wear like logoed shirts and I hosted events because I was like a little mini influencer, I want to say, in like the local junior golf community for where I grew up. And yeah, we we started Groupars, it was called not Groupon, but Groupars. Hunter Kallay (05:44) Okay. I like it. @MarketingMax (05:45) got gotta make as many pars as possible. And then someone ended up buying the business. They basically bought the email list of all of the people who were local golfers who wanted to get deals on on golf courses and tea time. Hunter Kallay (05:54) Wow. Wow. So the email was kind of important even early on. And so I I was gonna ask you how you transitioned from like this like marketing type, you know, having clients for marketing. you kind of sold it and then you transitioned to newsletters. So that I was gonna ask where that transition came from, but it sounds like it was a transition back to to newsletters or emails were there all the time. So like What what's kind what's been attractive to you about newsletters, email lists, and its effectiveness in marketing? @MarketingMax (06:25) So I I it's really interesting. I haven't put that together in a long time. I always forget that Groupars like when the business sold and I made, you know, my two dollars, or we didn't sell for much and I didn't own 50% of the company. I was the marketing guy, you know, and I was 16 and my my golf coach gave me a good percent and gave me a a little tiny, you know, monthly stipend salary, whatever you want to call it. But what happened was after I sold my agency. I started creating content online as marketing max. And basically one of my best friends in the entire world, Groomsman at my wedding. he was just getting started with his business. He had left corporate America. And he really wanted to grow big on TikTok. It was like right when TikTok was getting big, 2021, I want to say, summer of 2021. And we basically made this deal summer of 2021, maybe it was 2022, but whatever. Yeah, it was summer twenty thirty one. We basically made a deal where we're gonna post every single day on TikTok. We're gonna like and comment and share each other's posts, even though we're in two completely different niches. He was in real estate, I was in marketing. And any day for the whole summer that we don't post, we owe each other 500 bucks. Hunter Kallay (07:34) Okay. I love it, yeah. @MarketingMax (07:35) So it was like an accountability group. And it was like, yours did well yesterday. and so it was like, Hunter Kallay (07:39) Yeah. @MarketingMax (07:40) and and he actually ended up growing more followers than me at the time. He had, I think, 125, 120, or 150,000 followers after those three months, and I had like 60,000. But that was so amazing because I learned the power of content. I learned that what Hunter Kallay (07:56) Uh-huh. @MarketingMax (07:56) I have to say and my advice is valuable to some people, not everyone, but to some people. Hunter Kallay (08:01) Yeah. @MarketingMax (08:01) And I just had a link in my bio that was like, if you want five growth marketing tips, you know, enter your email here and I'll just email you like my my five best growth hacks. And it was basically just an email with a link to all of my most viral TikToks. But after that, I launched a course because I was like, I have 50,000 TikTok followers and everyone likes my my ideas. I'm gonna launch a $200 course. And it flopped. It like three people bought it, you know. Hunter Kallay (08:23) Yeah. You ask people to pull out their their wallet, then then it becomes difficult, right? @MarketingMax (08:29) Exactly, exactly. And and and so I went to one of my friends who's a very big influencer. Now he has like two hundred thousand Instagram followers. He always had a hundred thousand on Twitter. Alex Garcia, you might know him. he founded Marketing Examples. I actually don't know if he still runs marketing examples. I should hit him up about that. but I said like, Hey, like you have a course, like mine flopped. What did I do wrong? I emailed my list, I did a whole pre launch thing on TikTok. Like what I you know, I priced it around the same as yours and everyone else's like, what do do? And he's like, dude, don't do a course, do a newsletter. And I was like, What? That was like so left field for me. I was like, What? He's Hunter Kallay (09:05) Yeah. @MarketingMax (09:05) like, dude, there's n back then, this was like really before Beehive. Hunter Kallay (09:09) Yeah. @MarketingMax (09:11) maybe Beehive was around, but like this is before everyone and their brother had a had a newsletter. And the supply and demand was drastically in the newsletter's favor. So he said, you know, there's a ton of brands that want to sell to marketers. or CEOs who understand the value of marketing who are paying a lot of money to sponsor lists that are rather small. And so you should grow your list and you should sell ad spots in your newsletter. And that afternoon I bought the domain Growth Hacks Weekly and I set up a landing page on GrowthHacksweekly.com and I changed my Link in bio on Twitter and and TikTok to to growth hacksweekly.com. And I basically took my most viral TikToks and I repurposed them into one growth hack That I would send every Sunday that was that week's hack. And it was a tip, a hack, whatever, that any founder, CEO in any industry of any size company can use. That's the whole thesis. It's like there are marketing strategies and tactics that every company on planet Earth, whether you sell lingerie or whether you sell enterprise software at a million bucks a year, contract, it doesn't matter. There are things that you can derive value from and leverage. the same strategies and tactics. So I started sending it out. The feedback was great. I started selling ads in the newsletter. I did some very unique ways of pricing my ads that allowed me to monetize roughly a 10,000 subscriber list Hunter Kallay (10:30) Mm-hmm. @MarketingMax (10:30) with 12 to 15k a month advertising revenue. And that number's kind of unheard of these days. I don't say that with ego. I say that like I I wish I could do that because I now have Hunter Kallay (10:41) Right. @MarketingMax (10:42) 325,000 subscribers. Hunter Kallay (10:44) Right. @MarketingMax (10:45) And if the math translated, I'd be making a whole lot more money. Hunter Kallay (10:47) Yeah, if the math translated there, yeah. Pretty nice. @MarketingMax (10:53) but that that's kind of how it all started. And then, you know, I I had sold my agency right at the time I started creating TikTok or like doing the TikToks and creating Hunter Kallay (11:02) Yeah. @MarketingMax (11:02) this marketing max persona. And so I was just kind of like. Looking for my next business, looking for my next job and not job, but like company to start, business, whatever. I guess it was job. because you know, even if you own the company, you still work for your customers. That's what I always say. It kind Hunter Kallay (11:16) Mm-hmm. @MarketingMax (11:16) of feels like job sometimes. But I I kind of realized like I'm making, you know, 13, 14, 15k a month with a 10,000 subscriber newsletter. And I have demand, like I'm sold out six months in advance. This is crazy. Hunter Kallay (11:28) Mm-hmm. @MarketingMax (11:29) This business is a is a billboard business. Hunter Kallay (11:31) Mm-hmm. @MarketingMax (11:32) I just need more inventory. I need more billboards. So I launched a morning newsletter that was just marketing news recap because I was studying this stuff every day to figure out what was going to be the most viral TikTok or what should be the growth hack of the week. And I was on these websites. Hunter Kallay (11:44) Might as well share it, yeah. @MarketingMax (11:45) I was on social media today.com or seojournal.com. I was all these websites that like my audience had never heard about. But they were trusting me to to surface and curate the insights that they need to know about. So I launched the daily newsletter, and then once again, we were sold out like three to six months in advance. similar like pricing strategy, tactics, and hacks and everything. And then from there, I just started launching more newsletters because I was like, I just need more inventory. And so we launched an evening newsletter that's more tech focused, like tech industry, Silicon Valley. and then we launched an e com newsletter because a lot of e com brands follow me on Twitter, and therefore a lot of e com software tools and s you know, agency Hunter Kallay (12:27) Mm-hmm. @MarketingMax (12:28) service businesses wanna reach those people. So that's how it kinda started and and that's where it's at today. Hunter Kallay (12:34) That's awesome. I love hearing that story. So whenever I'm talking to people who start are starting out in newsletters or they're looking to Looking to different niches and trying to figure out which one am I going to kind of position myself in. One of the pieces of advice that I normally give is like find something that you can create repeatable content for. Like don't don't start a newsletter just because you have one or two good ideas that you want to share. Like @MarketingMax (13:01) Yeah. Hunter Kallay (13:02) don't think about the first newsletter, think about the hundredth newsletter. I'm very impressed with your multiple newsletters, but like the day the news newsletter, I get it. There's always something new. I run a kind of a news newsletter. Of course, makes sense. That hundredth edition will take care of itself because something's gonna pop up, right? But like the the growth tips newsletters really impress me. especially like you have growth daily, like that's super impressive that you're giving like growth strategies every day or every week. Or, you know, so after writing about marketing for years, How do you keep finding these ideas that are actually useful instead of just saying like, okay, we've reached day 847, I'm officially out of ideas, right? @MarketingMax (13:46) it's a good question. I think for Growth Daily specifically, the the hack for me is I can make an a new fresh insight of the day or marketing tip of the day based on the news. So, you know, YouTube launches a new feature in their ads platform that allows you to go on shorts, right? Or like run ads only in the in shorts, basically take the same Hunter Kallay (14:08) Yeah. @MarketingMax (14:09) ad inventory that you have on. you know, Instagram reels and TikTok take the same inventory, run it on YouTube Shorts. Okay, suddenly the inside of the day is here's three tips to leverage YouTube Shorts since that's a new thing. Hunter Kallay (14:20) Yeah. @MarketingMax (14:21) Right. So like growth daily, it's easy. It's I'm whatever the news is, I can kind of wrap my two cents, my ideas Hunter Kallay (14:27) Makes sense. @MarketingMax (14:29) around it. Like Gary V has this great line where he says, I say the same five or seven things every single day for two decades. I just find like New ways to articulate why Hunter Kallay (14:40) Yeah. @MarketingMax (14:40) you should be doing it. and great, great, great hack on this. If you are thinking about starting a newsletter and you don't know what day 100 could look like, Google Gary V, I think it's 150 pieces of content a day. Type in that whole thing. Gary V, 150 pieces of content a day. He has like a hundred slide deck that he put together, how he takes One piece of content and turns it into 150 pieces of content. And I'm not talking about like you Hunter Kallay (15:08) That's awesome. Yeah. @MarketingMax (15:09) record a podcast and then that becomes clips and then the sum. Not at all. Not at all. It's so much more than that. And I'm actually looking for a full time person right now to basically do that for me because we produce so much newsletter content. We need Hunter Kallay (15:24) Mm-hmm. @MarketingMax (15:25) to be better at turning that into social content in the way that Gary does. It's so smart and so clever. But that's how we do it on the on the growth hacks or sorry, on the growth daily side. On the weekly send the growth hacks weekly newsletter, which we kind of rebranded to just like Marketing Max's newsletter. Hunter Kallay (15:41) Yeah. @MarketingMax (15:42) it says growth hacks weekly at the top, like it's like, hey, this is from the desk of Marketing Max. That is really easy because I'm on Twitter all day. I'm on Instagram all day. I see what other people are doing and finding success with. Then Hunter Kallay (15:52) Mm-hmm. @MarketingMax (15:53) I repurpose that into my own content and of course cite them at the bottom or sometimes in the middle of it. So there are a hundred tweets every day. Here's how to optimize your LinkedIn profile. Here's the exact landing page profile I use for my clients that increases conversion rate on e-com brands. And so I can take their formula, their strategy, their tactic, and I can say, here's Hunter's strategy that he tweeted about. Here's what I like about it. Here's what I would do slightly different. If you Hunter Kallay (16:19) Uh-huh. @MarketingMax (16:19) want to go check out Hunter, here's his Twitter. And so it's kind of like content repurposing, but Hunter Kallay (16:23) Right. @MarketingMax (16:24) That's probably half of it. The other half is I'm on calls with clients all day and with advertisers all day. Not all day, actually. I only take calls on Tuesdays, but I I'm I'm slacking them and I'm emailing them nonstop. And I and I take calls with all these people. And so now I just have a a claude skill, a cloud automation that reads all my Fireflies transcripts on Tuesdays, reads all my emails, reads all my Slack messages, and then says, That tactic that you did with that client or that piece of advice you gave, because I'm also a fractional CMO and people pay me by the hour sometimes to just like give them advice on how to grow their business. It's it's another thing. I I think Gary V says this or someone said it, like sell the sawdust, right? Like you're you're building a table, right? And you can sell the table, but there's dust on the floor. Can you sell that? Can you repack can you repackage that? So now with AI, it's like, you know, you change that keyword. For that client, or you tried this new completely different type of keywords that a client has never run on Google Ads before, that's a growth, that's this week's growth Hunter Kallay (17:23) Right. That's super cool. I love the way you re repurpose that content. I I yeah. Anybody who can master that, really has unlocked another layer to their newsletter and their in their content, if you can really master that. Or yeah, in in your point about Claude too, like I don't remember what we did before Claude and Chat GPT. I'm kinda at the point where I'm like, I don't remember how I got work done w without without them. but yeah, totally. @MarketingMax (17:49) If you said that to me and you and you were on my team, we'd be having a serious conversation because I don't like my team to use it very much. Hunter Kallay (17:55) really? @MarketingMax (17:56) on both the agency side and and the media side. But yeah, I mean it it's made it a lot easier. Like before it, like life before it, right? I have a folder in Instagram and in Twitter that's just called Growth Hacks Weekly. Hunter Kallay (18:10) Yeah. @MarketingMax (18:10) And I bookmark probably five to ten things a week. There are hundreds. In that I'm never gonna run out of ideas just from the content repurposing of those people, right? Hunter Kallay (18:17) Yeah, yeah. Yep. @MarketingMax (18:19) And that's all a media business is like CNN, yes, they have or Fox News or whatever, they might have some in what's it called? like not breaking news, like proprietary investigative journalism where they're uncovering stories, they absolutely have that, but for the most part, when you watch it and when you watch like CNN. Fox News, C N B C on the business side. Hell, I'm a golfer. You watch golf channel, right? Hunter Kallay (18:45) Mm-hmm. @MarketingMax (18:45) They're not coming up with original stuff. They're just giving commentary on what's going Hunter Kallay (18:49) Yeah. @MarketingMax (18:49) on. Hunter Kallay (18:49) Yeah. It I I I've personally modeled @MarketingMax (18:51) That's it. Hunter Kallay (18:52) I've modeled my newsletter after this. I I was very surprised that you know, I used to just report what was going on. And I thought I'm gonna try to be unbiased. I'm gonna try to just give people what's going on, you know, curated news takes and stuff like that, tools that are interesting. And I was trying to take my opinion out of it for like the first two years I was running the newsletter, and then I'm like, You know what? Screw it. Like, I I know this stuff very well. Like, I'm I'm gonna give my takes on it. Started giving my takes, and now that's like the most popular thing. Like, that's all I hear is like people saying, Yeah, love hearing your takes, love hearing your spin on it. Because honestly, people can get news in a lot of different places, especially if you're running like a news newsletter. People can get news anywhere. They the reason that they open the email is they want to hear you. They want to hear your takes on it, your spin on it. and so Yeah, I I always tell people this like, don't shy away from putting you in your newsletter. Like they should know who you are. They should know your takes, your angles, repurpose the content, and make it your own. I I think that's a great, great advice. @MarketingMax (19:56) Yeah, I a lot of people when I say like just give your opinion, give your take on what's going on, they either say, Well, how do I know what's going on? And it's like, well, then you shouldn't start a newsletter or or a media Hunter Kallay (20:05) Right, right. @MarketingMax (20:06) business. yes, there are ways to hack it. Like Google News is one of the most underrated ways to hack that. Like you can type in e-commerce into Google, just e-com. And then underneath where it says, you know, images. There's an option for news, and it'll show you all of the news articles in the e-com industry in the last 24 hours. Right? But that's the first thing people say. The second thing is I don't have a unique opinion. I don't have a hot take. I don't have contrarian views. Cool. No one does. Literally no one does. Like all of the contrarian views that you think like Elon Musk has, and like political, all of that, there are. Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people who already believe that. Those people are just giving truth and speaking Hunter Kallay (20:47) Yeah. @MarketingMax (20:48) truth to what that is. Or not truth, but they're they're just finally speaking it out loud. Right? You don't need contrarian views, you don't need opinions. I don't have hot takes. Gary Vee doesn't have hot takes. Alex Hermosy doesn't have hot takes. There's nothing proprietary about what Alex Hermosy says. Sorry, mad respect for the guy, mad respect for the guy. But every single one of his business principles. is not business one one, but they're like best in class business advice. Hunter Kallay (21:14) Yeah. @MarketingMax (21:14) They're best in class business advice. You've just never learned them. So you think it's mind-blowing. You've never heard of these things. A lot of sophisticated business owners who are running businesses way bigger than me, they look at Alex Ramosy and they're like, hundred million dollar leads, hundred million dollar offer. Okay, have a money back guarantee. Okay, make it irresistible. Okay, follow up with people more. Like he gives a name to it. Seriously. Mad again, mad respect. Hunter Kallay (21:35) Yeah. No, you're right. @MarketingMax (21:36) Mad respect for Alex Ramosy, right? Everything he says is great. But he's labeling best in class business advice. He gives a name to it. This is my three, three, two framework. So it becomes easier to understand, easier to follow, easier to teach your team to do it. Right? That's all. That's all it is. So you Hunter Kallay (21:50) Right. @MarketingMax (21:51) don't need contrarian takes in your newsletter, in your social content. You just need to give your opinion on it. And I promise you, you will build a following of people who said exactly what they said to you, Hunter, and exactly what they say to me, which is love your content, love your opinion, love your advice. Hunter Kallay (22:05) Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And that's how you separate yourself from the the, you know, everybody else. So love @MarketingMax (22:11) Yeah. Hunter Kallay (22:12) that. @MarketingMax (22:12) Now but now on the other side of things, right? There is a crop of of newsletter operators who Their whole pitch is no commentary, no fluff. Hunter Kallay (22:21) Yeah. @MarketingMax (22:22) 1440 is one. you know, there's a couple other ones, like that's their whole pitch. So in a world where there's too much commentary, there's too much hot takes or opinion, you can get away with just giving the facts, right? You could get away with just that. Hunter Kallay (22:38) Yeah. Yeah. @MarketingMax (22:39) My CEO report newsletter that goes out in the evenings does that. It's straight up. News and it does very well. But the affinity is not there. Hunter Kallay (22:45) Yeah. Right, right. @MarketingMax (22:47) It doesn't build that trust. Hunter Kallay (22:49) Yeah, you get casual fans, you know, casual followers, but not really those invested people who will buy from you or invest with you or who are eager to open and hear what you have to say. I I @MarketingMax (23:00) Exactly. Exactly. Hunter Kallay (23:02) wanna I wanna talk about two more things as we as we get through this podcast. I wanna I wanna one bring up something that I thought was really interesting that I that I found on the growth in reverse newsletter, which is a great, great newsletter. You're featured and it talked about, I think it was a little little while ago, but you talked about how you changed one little thing on your newsletter landing page. Your conversion rate went from 7.6% to nearly like 38%. talk me through that. Like what is key on the landing page that people maybe often miss, or like what are tweaks that they should be making, or what's the tweak that you made there? @MarketingMax (23:43) I I need your pre podcast AI researcher or whoever's doing the research on your team. This is great. I haven't talked about this stuff in a long time. I haven't posted about it in a long time. Hunter Kallay (23:49) Do s we do some we do some deep stalking into the the profiles here. @MarketingMax (23:54) Hey, you're extracting great insights for me. At least I think this is interesting. So I assume you have it for all the other episodes. I have listened to a handful of episodes, but don't forget to like and subscribe, guys, because this is some good some good stuff here. look, the the problem and this is a perfect example of the Alex Ramosy stuff, right? Like most people when they start a newsletter, they're like, I'm gonna put everything that's in the newsletter when it goes out. Testimonials of people who read it, who our advertisers are, logos of people who read if you're in B2B. I'm gonna put all this stuff on the landing page. Terrible idea. Terrible idea. I did that, I had a seven percent landing page conversion rate. Meaning if I was paying a dollar to Meta to get Hunter Kallay (24:34) Mm-hmm. @MarketingMax (24:34) a new subscriber, seven out of every hundred people, right, were were signing Hunter Kallay (24:38) Yeah. @MarketingMax (24:38) up. So I'm paying more than ten dollars per subscriber. Right. Immediate jump from roughly seven to roughly 35% by killing everything that I mentioned, having one headline Hunter Kallay (24:49) Mm. @MarketingMax (24:49) that says you are about to get. That is the goaded Hunter Kallay (24:54) Mm-hmm. @MarketingMax (24:55) best tagline ever on a newsletter landing page. And then you are about to get, if you have a lead magnet, if you have something that where you give them right away, you're about to get. My five best growth hacks to grow your business faster. Right. But if you don't have a lead magnet, that's okay. You can say you're about to get the best or the most unique or the most interesting or the most effective marketing tactics in your inbox weekly from a guy who's driven over $100 million in revenue. And then right underneath it, you say, and if you have the lead magnet, you're about to get Max's five best growth hacks. There you You have it up right here. You're about to get my five best growth hacks. And then right beneath it, you have join X amount. So you're giving them a sense of comfort that you're not the only one subscribing, right? You're creating the what I call the the the cafeteria, right? Hunter Kallay (25:43) Right. @MarketingMax (25:44) The social hall where, yeah, other people are also wearing a tank top. Exactly. Exactly. Hunter Kallay (25:47) Yeah. So validation. I'm I'm not just telling you this. Look at look at the everybody else. Yeah. @MarketingMax (25:52) Now part of it's proof, right? There's 250,000 people that read this newsletter. Right. Part of it's proof. The other part of it is again the comfortability of, someone else is wearing, and I'm only using this analogy because I'm watching rewatching Friday Night Lights right now. Great, great show if you haven't heard it, heard of it. If you're into sports, watch Friday Night Lights on on Amazon Prime. But there's a comfortability of like, I walk into the cafeteria and everyone else my age is also wearing a tank top or everyone else my age is also wearing a t shirt of their favorite band. I can do the same thing. I'm not gonna be an outlier, right? So there's social proof, but also the the the comfortability of it, right? So join 250,000 world class CEOs marketers right now and you will get so I give you first bullet point, you're gonna get my five best growth hacks. Exactly what I said above. But you're also gonna get our growth daily newsletter with one growth strategy every single day. And then you're also gonna get my Sunday send, right? The growth growth hacks weekly or from the desk of Marketing Max now. This landing page converts roughly 35 to 40% on all channels. It's like Hunter Kallay (26:52) Love that. @MarketingMax (26:52) 70% on my on my Twitter bio, on my Instagram bio. Meta lowers it down. but I've A B tested more than 200 variations of this page. I've changed the picture. I've made the picture smaller. I've made the picture bigger. I've changed, see around the the the email input box, it's blue, it's not black. Increase Hunter Kallay (27:09) Mm-hmm. @MarketingMax (27:09) conversion rate. Not saying it will for you. I've tested the word continue. Submit, get it now, subscribe now. I've tested animations on that button. When you land, does it pulse? Does that continue button pulse? Is the ca I've A-B tested all of this. People do not understand because they've never been taught, it's not your fault, but people don't understand how small little changes on this landing page can make a massive difference. I literally went from seven to thirty-five percent. Right? Hunter Kallay (27:33) That's awesome. That's unbelievable. Yeah. It's it's @MarketingMax (27:35) Five X. Five X more subscribers without spending any more money. Hunter Kallay (27:39) I love a couple of things I love about this, like to just jump off the page when I see it. The y'all get, like you're about to get, you will get, you will receive. That's what people want. You know, they they don't they don't want to jump through hoops to like, you know, do something for you. Like they want to receive stuff. Like, sh tell them what they're going to get. I love that. you say it twice. You know, you le you have a lead magnet like right away. Like you're going to instantly get this. Like there's not something waiting around. It's not like sign up and I'll keep sending you this. Like that's there, but it's here, you are about to get this thing. Here's here's what you need to do for me to get, you know, continue this process. I love how you have the bullet points there. that makes it very clear what the deliverables are. And I love the continue button. Like that's something that I don't see very often. It's normally subscribe, submit, sign up. Those words are like a blocker for people. Like, I don't think people realize how much like signing up for st something, even if it's free, just sounds like a commitment. People don't like to commit like that. Like this is very much like keeps the flow going. They they obviously clicked on something to get to this landing page. Continue. Like continue the journey. It's not something that like like you're already within the flow when you hit this page. It's not a blocker that's like a barrier to entry. So I I love everything about this page. yeah, everybody who's who's watching this, go copy this exactly. not the you know, maybe not Steel Max's like face and all that, but like, you know, make it make it your own. And yeah, I think I think it's great. @MarketingMax (29:20) Again, I just think no one was taught this. Like the only reason I did this is because I ran a performance ad agency for five years. One of the biggest Hunter Kallay (29:28) Mm-hmm. @MarketingMax (29:29) ways to increase your return on ads when you spend money on Meta or Google Ads or any channel is actually the landing page. Everyone obsesses over creative. We need more ads, we need better ads. We need Hunter Kallay (29:38) Yeah. @MarketingMax (29:38) ads that speak to whatever. Everyone thinks they're Don Draper. I guarantee you, you're not Don Draper, nor is Claude, by the way. Claude doesn't write the best copy. Hunter Kallay (29:45) Yep. Yep. Hundred percent. @MarketingMax (29:47) Does it write better than you? Maybe. Maybe. Claude doesn't write great copy. What's the thing that's gonna move the needle the most is actually nine times out of ten most likely to be your landing page. Hunter Kallay (29:56) I love that. That's gr that's golden advice right there. You want to lower your Metacost landing page right there. cool. So last thing I want to talk about today. you've grown the newsletter business quite a bit, a couple hundred thousand subscribers, and you recently acquired a new newsletter. So tell me about that process in decision to acquire that newsletter. @MarketingMax (30:22) So the biggest driver of my newsletter growth has been meta ads for sure. Number one. Number two, ads and other newsletters. But meta ads just gets more expensive every year, right? It's not a newsletter industry thing. It's just a fact. Meta is a publicly traded company. They need to increase their revenue every 90 days. So they need to raise the cost to advertise on Meta. I've been looking and thinking outside the box. How can I grow my list? In a very cost effective way. How can I grow my audience? And my background is in investment banking. Buying businesses, selling businesses is very normal to me. I've sold three businesses before. You can see my my little in finance we call them tombstones, the little plaques down there, for each one of those deals. And so I was like, what if I just go buy a newsletter? And I started reaching out to a bunch of newsletters. And there's a couple marketplaces. Obviously, you can go to acquire.com, but there's couple niche marketplaces that just buy and sell newsletters. But one thing I learned is that most newsletter operators have a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible understanding of what their newsletter is actually worth. So people will Hunter Kallay (31:23) Yeah. @MarketingMax (31:24) be like, you know, my newsletter has 10,000 subscribers and it made twenty thousand dollars last year. And so at a normal business multiple of five X, you know, my newsletter is worth $100,000. And the reality is it's not, and that's why it sits there for months and months and months and months and months. They keep sending it. But a lot of these smaller newsletter operators, they realized that they basically gave themselves a job. They thought it'd be really easy to get advertisers and grow the list. And Beehive makes it very easy to do both of those things as a side hustle. But to make, you know, real money to replace your income, it's very hard to do if if you're not doing it full time. So I just went to a bunch of them, was like, hey, your newsletter's been sitting there for three months. It's not worth a hundred grand. What I can do is I can give you X amount up front, then I can give you Y amount of ad sales for the next six months for the next year of ads that we sell in your newsletter. And I show them our revenue and I show them our ad sales process and how we do it. and I give them the tricks of my trade, how I'm able to get a lot more advertisers than most people are. And I'm like, look, you could take my whole playbook that I just gave you, you could go do this yourself. Or you can get X amount of cash up front wired to you, like today, basically. and then a percent of everything that we do going forward and and you're good to go. And I maybe got on the phone with like four different newsletters, walked them through this whole process. I think two ended up being really good fits, and then we ended up acquiring one. they have seventy five thousand subscribers and you know the the the cost per subscriber for us was was very, very, very healthy on a unit Hunter Kallay (32:57) Nice. @MarketingMax (32:57) economics basis. And then they get a percent of everything we sell. So You know, I think it'll still come out way ahead for us, but they were happy because they didn't want the job anymore of running the newsletter and we love their audience and we could sell ads to that audience all day, every day and it's a win win. Hunter Kallay (33:13) That's awesome. I love that. yeah, that's great. I mean, I see a lot of people who are just not sure how to evaluate newsletter like newsletter value. Like, I I mean a 7,000 subscriber list, like like you're saying earlier, 10,000 subscriber lists can in some instances be much more valuable than 50k. You know, it @MarketingMax (33:36) For sure. Hunter Kallay (33:36) really depends. And I think that. People look a lot at the numbers. They're like, I have 10,000 subscribers and this is my open rate or something like that. which I mean, of course, is important to some extent, but like, you know, with a grain of salt, right? So, like, what's the number one thing people who are either looking to sell their newsletter or buy a newsletter should be looking for in order to evaluate the that that newsletter? @MarketingMax (34:01) Those are those are two very different things. If you're looking to sell your newsletter, you should be looking at realistically what do other newsletters in your market trade for. I Hunter Kallay (34:10) Mm-hmm. @MarketingMax (34:10) think the biggest misconception is everyone looks at, we've made X amount of money in the last year. And so we're just gonna times that by five or times it by ten. That's not really how it works. Hunter Kallay (34:20) Mm-hmm. @MarketingMax (34:21) i because I'm buying a job. I have to go sell. I'm not buying a software where there's money coming every single month. It's not, I guess if Hunter Kallay (34:25) Right. Right. @MarketingMax (34:27) it if there's a pro tier like a paid, you know, gated content subscription, that's different. But I'm essentially buying the list. and so I'm kind of you're kind of selling a job to someone, right? So Hunter Kallay (34:40) Yeah. @MarketingMax (34:41) I I think you need to know what your number is that makes you happy, not, because I see that someone else sold for five X, I can also sell for five X. just come up with a number that makes sense for you, that that makes you happy, not what the industry is. I know that's kind of contrary to what most people would advise because everyone wants to make it very mathematical and this this is the average trading volume or or exit multiple or whatever. and then when you're looking to buy a newsletter, you have to do the math. You have to do the math and figure out what your expected you know, base case, upside case, and downside case is for how you're gonna monetize it. Hunter Kallay (35:14) Yep. Great advice. @MarketingMax (35:15) Pretty pretty pretty simple, but I I think you have to throw out the like five dollars per subscriber thing or a dollar per subscriber Hunter Kallay (35:21) Yeah. @MarketingMax (35:22) thing. So the the there is one one like thing that helped me think about this was obviously the whole reason I started to even consider buying a newsletter was I know what my kind of average cost per good qualified subscriber is. And so if I'm paying two bucks to meta, it's like, can I go find someone who will sell me theirs at a buck? And then they get X percent of revenue going forward or seventy five cents Hunter Kallay (35:43) Right. @MarketingMax (35:43) per subscriber or whatever it is. because they want out of a job. out of the job and they they want other things. Hunter Kallay (35:50) Right. Yeah, makes sense. Cool. Well, as we wrap up here, is there anything that, you know, you'd like to shout out or anybody in the newsletter space that you'd like to shout out or you know, tell us at least where we can go follow all your all your stuff. @MarketingMax (36:04) Yeah, I'm I'm most active on Twitter, Marketing Max on Twitter. if you wanna ask questions about how we price things or how we grow the list or anything. I used to have a a newsletter course and I don't like courses, but people used to pay me a thousand bucks an hour to help them with their newsletter, and I realized I was getting the same questions over and over and over again. And this was before Fireflies and all these AI note takers were everywhere. So I literally had like an old fashioned like yellow legal notepad where I was write down all the questions that I got on calls. And I basically recorded eight hours of videos answering all of those questions with screen shares walking through why I do the landing page the specific way and a couple of things to test on the landing page side of things. how to pitch and price your newsletters to make significantly more money out of the same piece of real estate. and so if if you have any other questions or if you're struggling in your newsletter journey, let me know. With all that said, I'm not the foremost expert at all. Like there are guys that do. you know, a hundred X more revenue than we do, and grow a lot faster than we do and spend a lot more money than we do. But if I can help make your life a little bit easier, feel free to DM me on Twitter or hit me up at max at marketingmax dot io. Hunter Kallay (37:11) Sweet. Yeah. So if you found i this conversation valuable, I definitely found it very valuable. I learned a lot throughout the the last, you know, last half hour or so. So really appreciated you coming on, talking to us. And yeah, keep up the great work and maybe we'll we'll have you on again soon. looking forward to following along. @MarketingMax (37:26) Thanks for having me and looking forward to seeing everyone in my DMs and helping everyone grow their their newsletter as much as I can.